Book Review: Darkness of Dragons by Tui T. Sutherland (Wings of Fire #10)

 

This is is. The end of arc 2. It's been a pretty good arc so far, but it it doesn't hold a candle to the first. So how does this final book finish it off? Let's find out. Spoilers ahead.

Darkstalker is preparing for war, IceWings are dying of a mysterious plague and in the middle of all this, Qibli finds himself wishing he were more powerful so he could just bring an end to all of this. How will the possibly defeat an immortal and invulnerable dragon?

Other than Moon Rising, this is probably my least favorite book in the arc. Is it bad? No, of course not, but I didn't find myself enjoying it quite as much.

First all, the first part of this book is kind of a sidequest by itself, where Qibli travels to the desert to rescue Ostrich (who somehow got captured again). There's of course the part about meeting his family, but it doesn't add too much to the overall narrative. What does actually play a part in the bigger picture is Qibli finding a magical way to make copies of his spell-immunity earring. The first part of the book was fine, but it didn't feel too connected to everything else.

Qibli makes for an okay lead. I really wanted to like him, and I think he was fine in other books, but I just don't care that much for his POV. I think I'd much rather have had a Kinkajou book, as I enjoy her character a lot more and after having been in a coma twice in the the first two arcs I think she deserves better, but I guess we'll have to make do with Qibli. I did like his banter with Winter, but I couldn't care less about his romance with Moon (which felt kind of forced). I also just could not relate to his wish for more power at all. We already know that Darkstalker is immortal and cannot be harmed, even if he did have animus powers he couldn't have killed him. His family was... okay, too, I suppose, but just not really something that particularly peaked my interest. His grandfather, Vulture, was a really boring side-villain though. 

I'm also not the biggest fan by how they ended the conflict. The whole "empathy-spell" seemed like a very anticlimactic way to end things. I guess for Darkstalker they literally couldn't kill him off due to him being invulnerable, so we had to make do with turning him into a harmless dragonet. I'm kind of neutral on this resolution. It was okay but I liked the endings of Blaze and Burn in arc one better. 

So, yeah, I'm in no way saying that this is a bad book, it's definitely not. It just left some things to be desired, and didn't have as likable a protagonist as I thought it could've had. 

Rating: 4/5